Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Page 274

EDWARD WESTERMARCK AND THE
FINNISH SOCIOLOGICAL SCHOOL
By Ragnar Numelin
of the Finnish Foreign Ministry.
EDWARD WESTERMARCK died at the beginning of the
present Great War at the age of seventy-seven, intellectual-
ly active to the end. During his lifetime Westermarck,
whose scientific output is of rare richness and solidity, held two
chairs of Philosophy in the Universities in Finland (first in the
State University, then in the Academy of Ábo) and a chair of
Sociology in the University of London. If we lay the main
emphasis on his work in the sphere of philosophy, it is as a re-
presentative of moral philosophy that we must view him. Wester-
marck’s weightiest contribution, however, is in the field of
sociology which generally is called social anthropology: the study
of the origin and development of social institutions.
Among the human disciplines practised at universities philo-
sophy has, at any rate earlier, occupied an important position.
This was the case already with scholasticism in the Middle Ages,
and historical, theoretical and moral philosophy have ranked as
high. Workers in philosophy have been representatives of the
cultivation of the humanities. Dr. Westermarck was for several
decades a leading figure in Finnish philosophical and sociological
research. And if it is true, as has been said, that the reputation
gained by a scientist abroad is a relative indication of his signi-
ficance within his branch of science, then Westermarck’s signi-
ficance was internationally great.
Edward Westermarck was born in 1862. The boy grew up
in the Westermarck home near the Old Church in the capital of
Finland, in a home with academic traditions and intellectual inte-
rests. He gave proof at an early age of a wide range of gifts and
interests. To music and the piano he remained faithful through
his life. Westermarck’s Phil. Cand. examination already included
philosophy as one of his chief subjects — the cultivation of philo-
sophy was at that time an undivided discipline under Professor
Th. Rein. Westermarck was early drawn to English empiricism
and the theory of evolution as formulated by Darwin and
Spencer. German metaphysics interested him less; he was of the
opinion that much in it that was regarded as profundity was in